“With a beer-driver!” exclaimed Baron, really amazed.
She regarded him serenely. “Oh, a beer-driver,” she said. “I wouldn’t think about that part of it at all. I would have to know something about him that really counted, if it came down to an argument. You’re only thinking of his make-up. And, my goodness! I’ve seen many a Simon Legree go into his dressing-room and change his clothes—and come out the nicest sort of a fellow. I’ve got a hunch that if there is—” She paused, shamefaced, and then continued: “If there is somebody up in the skies keeping tab—somebody managing the big stage—the whole world, I mean—he knows just what we are, or ought to be, if the make-up wasn’t there to make us seem ugly and mean and hateful.”
“But, look here! That isn’t a make-up that fellow down there has on; it’s himself!”
“Not at all! What’s the difference whether it is the wardrobe mistress that hands you what you have to wear, or—or just accident? I mean the way you happen to get started, and whatever it is you have to do. You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean, well enough. But what I mean is, why should you suppose that chap down there didn’t get just what he studied for—what he fitted himself for?”
“Because they give you a part and say: ‘This is your part,’ and that’s all there is to it.”
“Oh, on the stage—possibly. But what can you see in that fellow that makes you think there’s anything to him—that he’d be trustworthy, for example?”
She leaned forward, wholly alert. “It’s easy,” she declared. “See how he sits, with his feet square on the dashboard, and with his head held up high that way. That means he knows what he’s about.”
Baron felt himself getting red in the face. He remembered his habit of sitting with his legs tangled up when he was at his ease. Quite cautiously he got himself into a more purposeful attitude. “Anything else?” he asked.
The beer-driver was now driving away.